an muttered, with
the inevitable oath, that he _would_ lead it. But from the beginning to
the end of his military service he was paying the penalty, not merely of
the quarreling which had brought him wounds, but of intemperate eating
and drinking, which had ruined his digestion. Sometimes he was tortured
for hours with pains that could be relieved only by hanging his body,
like a garment hung to dry, face downward, over the back of a chair, or,
if he were on the march, over a sapling stripped and bent for the
purpose.

By the second week in October, Jackson was at Huntsville, on the
Tennessee River. The entire command numbered about 2700. Its supplies
were to come by water from Knoxville, in East Tennessee, but the upper
part of the river was not navigable by reason of the dryness of the
season. Jackson stormed at the delay, but used the time in drilling his
men and scouring the country with Coffee's cavalry. Then he cut his way
over the mountains to a higher point on the river, hoping to find the
supplies. His energy was great, but without food he could not, as he
desired, dash at once into the enemy's country. He moved southward when
he had food, halted when it gave out, and finally reached the Coosa.
From his camp there, which he named Fort Strother, he dispatched Coffee
to strike a first blow against the Creek town of Tallusahatchee. Coffee
destroyed the town, and not a warrior escaped, for the whites were
bitterly revengeful. A slain mother embracing a living infant was found
among the dead. Jackson himself took care of the child, sent it to The
Hermitage, and he and his wife reared it to manhood.

The next blow was struck at Talladega, thirty miles below Fort Strother,
where a body of friendly Indians were besieged by a larger body of Red
Sticks. Relying on General White, who was in the neighborhood with a
force of Cocke's East Tennesseans, to protect Fort Strother, Jackson
marched by night to Talladega. There, however, a dispatch reached him
from White, who announced that he must return to Cocke. So at sunrise
Jackson threw himself on the enemy, routed him with great loss, relieved
the friendly Indians, and then marched back to camp, to find no
provisions, and the sick and wounded as hungry as the rest. From that
time the struggle with famine was for weeks his principal business. Ill
as he was, he and his officers would have nothing the men could not
have. A soldier coming to him to beg for food, he thrust his h